Guides:Basic Mining

As you start out in EVE you are not very skilled, and need to get more skills and more knowledge. To do that you need money. Mining is one of the simplest and fastest ways of getting money in EVE. This guide will show you the basics of mining.

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Since typically mining is a means to an end instead of an end itself, your goal should be to make as much money as fast as possible. As far as mining goes, this goal is achieved by getting into a mining cruiser, which is superior in every way to a mining frigate both in terms of survivability and income generation (in isk per hour).

When you complete your tutorial, you are thrown in the world with a newbie ship. This ship is totally unsuitable for any real mining; as such, you should acquire your racial mining frigate as soon as possible.

If you do not have Mining IV, you should equip as many Miner I modules as your ship can fit. Once you get Mining IV, you should equip as many Miner II modules as your ship can fit. Don't bother with named mining lasers -- they are much more expensive and are not as productive as Miner II modules.

These modules are low slot modules that create more space in your ship's cargo hold. When your cargo hold is full, all of your ship's mining lasers will deactivate. Cargo Expanders ensure that you can fit a full cycle of your mining lasers' output in your cargo hold.

You should equip as many Expanded Cargohold I modules as your ship can fit. Don't bother with named cargo expanders -- they are very expensive and are useful primarily for hauling.

Survey scanners are useful, but not a must have item. The scanners will give you a concrete idea of the concentration of ores in the system. While the mining overview shows you that there are two asteroids with pristine jaspet, the scanner will tell you that one has 3,000 units while the other has 10. And since it always seems that desirable ores with better yields are usually 45km apart, it makes more sense to go for the one with a larger amount of ore to be extracted - especially if you're jetcanning.

Mining frigates are fragile. Because of this, you should stay in 0.9 or 1.0 space to mine -- pirate drones do not spawn and you will be safe from attack by other players. Furthermore, it is a good idea to mine in systems that have good markets where you can sell your ore.

If you mine in 0.9 or 1.0 security space, you typically have little choice of what ore to mine -- the most populous asteroid type you are likely to see is Veldspar. Veldspar is the lowest grade ore because when it is refined it produces only Tritanium, the least expensive mineral per unit on the market. Better than Veldspar is Scordite, which you should mine if you happen to see it in 0.9 space. Scordite produces Pyerite when refined.

Other asteroids you might find in 0.9 and 1.0 space are Plagioclase and sometimes Pyroxeres. Plagioclase when refined produces Tritanium, Pyerite and Mexallon. Pyroxeres yields those three as well, plus a small amount of Nocxium.

Also be on the lookout for named asteroids, such as Concentrated Veldspar and Dense Veldspar. The ores these asteroids contain yield more minerals per unit (5% more and 10% more) than the standard ore and therefore typically command higher prices on the market.

In the beginning, mining was tedious. Players mined at an asteroid until their cargo holds were full, flew back to the station to unload, went back to the asteroid belt, mined more ore until their holds were full, and so on. Over time players have developed techniques that have made mining much more productive (if still somewhat tedious). This section will introduce you to these techniques and help you get the most out of your time mining.

Jetcan Mining involves a technique where a player will jettison their cargo untill they have reached a desired amount, once this is reached players will use a ship with a much larger cargo hold to then transport the contents of the jettison can to a nearby station. The cans will only last for 2h before disappearing and all of the contents will be lost.

Note: Aulthough this will save alot of time, the risk of other players opening your cargo and stealing the contents are very real and in somecases do so only to initiate combat with a miner without an interuption by CONCORDE rather than profiting from the miner's goods.

Generally, there are three things you can do with the ore that you mine:

Refine the ore into minerals and sell the minerals. If your standing with the faction that owns the station is good, and if you have good refining skills, it is often best to refine the ore and sell the minerals. Furthermore, because minerals take up less space than ore in a hauler, it is easier to move them to a hub system and sell them for a good price.

Sell the ore directly. If your standing with the station owner is bad and you do not have any refining skills, you are probably better off selling the ore rather than refining and selling the minerals.

Refine the ore into minerals and build things with the minerals. If you have good production skills and good refining skills, it can be profitable to refine your ore into minerals and produce equipment with the minerals. However, if you are just starting out you probably don't have the appropriate skills, and even if you have the skills the opportunity cost of producing the equipment yourself would probably still be high.

There are two ways to deal with the ore you mine. The first and easiest way is to just haul the ore to the nearest station yourself. However, there is a much more efficient way to transport ore than this one. It is known as container mining.

If you don't have an industrial ship and the skills to fly it yet and you're mining alone, you can not container mine. You will need to warp back to your station and drop the ore off there.

Once you're docked just open your ship's cargo again, left click the ore in your cargo bay and hold down, drag it to your item (personal) hangar and let go. Now undock and start mining again. Repeat as neccessary.

If you have an industrial ship and the skills to pilot it, or you find someone with an industrial ship who is willing to help you, you can container mine.

To container mine, mine as usual, only once your cargo bay is near full of ore right click your ore and choose jettison. This will launch your ore into space inside a cargo container. This cargo container has a life span of 1.5 hours, give or take. The beauty of this cargo container is that is can hold up to 27500 m3, which is a whole lot of ore.

So once you've jettison your ore, find the container that is floating in space next to your ship. Right click it and choose open cargo. Now place that window right next to your ships cargo bay window.

You can now take the ore that the mining lasers extracts in to your cargo bay and move it to the floating cargo container so your cargo bay doesn't fill up. Just left click the ore in your cargo bay, hold down, drag it to the floating cargo container and let go. You will see how the ore gets transferred into the floating cargo container.

If you are mining with the help of someone with an industrial ship (henceforth called a "Hauler"), the hauler will take the ore straight from the container and put it into their hold, being sure to always leave somthing in the container to keep it from dissapearing. Usually you should just seperate the ore into two piles, by holding shift and dragging the stack of ore to the side, then putting 1 in the stack size field. This will give you a seperate stack of 1 ore, which you will leave in the container until you're done mining. Make sure that you don't drop your harvested ore onto the stack of 1, or you'll have to seperate it again. Once the hauler has no more cargo space, he or she goes to the nearest station and drops off the ore. When everyone is done mining, the hauler sells the ore and divides up the profits between himself and the miners. Make sure you agree on how to divide up the cash before you start mining. This proccess involves at least one miner and one hauler, but you can actually have as many miners and haulers as you want. Usually it's best to have one hauler and as many miners as you can get together, all dropping into the same container.

If you are container mining by yourself, just keep on mining until you have filled your floating cargo container. Then go and dock with your mining ship, jump in to your industrial ship, go back to the cargo container and take the ore in it and transport it back to your station. Note that with this method there is a considerable chance that some one may take your ore while you're switching ships.
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Naming the Cargo Container (CC)

A side note there, as you can see when right clicking your jettison cargo container that is floating in space you can also name it. This is a useful feature; you can name your cargo container so that you can see how long it's been in space, making it easier for you to keep watch of the life span time limit.

Also, naming it a certain way will make it easier for the one hauling the ore to see which one to grab from ones the come out of warp. In Intermundia we use a special way to name our jettison cargo containers, especially at corp. mining operations.

1. ABC 23:34 2. ABC 23:55 And so forth.

Number = 1, 2, 3, and so forth. This is to make it easy to FAST find what containers is the first one or the latest one.

ABC = for our corporation, you might have others mining in the same belt, can be useful tag your containers, can also be useful so people coming in to the same belts as you don't think it's an abandon container.

Time = this is so you can keep track of how old the container is, use the time from the eve clock in game. That is GMT time; don't use your own local time or any other time since you might be mining with people that aren't in the same time zone as you.

The industrial ship has a much larger cargo bay then the regular ships, so it can take a lot more ore each time it goes to the station. Many people choose to specialize in hauling, buying an industrial ship and filling it with cargo expanders and the like, and then offering hauling services to miners (for a part of the profit, of course). This is a very good way to make money, because the skills and equipment used in hauling is very different than those used in mining.

When hauling, remember that there are a few drawbacks to using a jettison container to mine in.

It has a limited life span, when it has been in space for 1.5 hours you have to start to haul (transport) your ore to the station. If you leave a jettison container too long in space it will implode and all your ore will be gone. And no, the life span doesn't get any longer because you keep on putting ore in to it. The life span cycle starts from when you jettison it in to space.

Anyone can take from a jettison container. There are people that like to take ore from other people. Anyone can come to your jettison container and take ore from it, and people who do are called ore thieves. There is nothing you can do about it; if you choose to use this method to mine you are also allowing other people to take from you. Yes it's dishonest and a shitty thing to do. The best defence against ore theives is to take the ore straight into your cargo hold as soon as it it is put into the container.

If you're above 0.4 security system and mining and some one takes ore from you, you can't shoot them. If you do concord (police) will warp in the next second, warp scramble your ship and shoot it down. So you would be the one who loses both ore and a ship if you shoot at an ore thief in a 1.0 to 0.5 security system.

The best thing to do when some one takes ore from you is to warp back to your station, change to your industrial ship and go back to pick up any ore that might be left. Also tell on the ore thief in local chat window. Type something like, "name" is an ore thief, watch out he just stole ore from me. Repeat it a few times and if the ore thief responds saying it didn't take any ore, just ignore it, keep saying he took ore from you.

At least you may have prevented the ore thief from taking any ore from some one else, and this may also make the ore thief move to another system since there might be no business for him in the system you are in.

But there is also other things you can do to speed up mining, maybe not the mining in it self, but how you mine, Bookmarks.

Yes bookmarks can speed up the whole mining process for you; these bookmarks will let you haul the ore faster.

You know how when you warp to something, say a gate or a station you always have to travel for about 15 km before you can jump or dock. This is a tedious job and slows down travel.

With bookmarks you can make it so your industrial ship gets out of warp at the exact same spot as where your jettison cargo containers are in space, this makes it of course a lot faster for you to pick up the ore if you can at once when you get out of warp grab the ore instead of hitting approach.

Also book marking the station to where you're transporting your ore to will let you once you're out of warp to dock to it right away instead of have to approach it for 15 km.

Making such bookmarks are a very important when you want to speed up your mining, and also when you're mining in a group. One industrial ship can easily sustain 3 battleships mining at full speed.

So instead of having 2 people mining and 2 people hauling, you have 3 people mining and 1 hauling. You get more ore this way, and in the end more money.
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Guide on making a bookmark

Ok first of we want to make a bookmark in the belt we're going to mine in. It's best if you make these bookmarks as what I want to call them spots.

If you're using mining lasers 2 you have a range of 12km in each direction, so make the most out of that. Make your bookmarks so you can reach 12 km to your left, and 12km to your right. Start from the outer left asteroid and travel in to the belt until you get 12 km from it.

Stop your ship at 12 km from it and jettison something in to space. Can be anything, 1 piece of ore, or a module or ammo. Lock on to that jettison cargo container so you can see the distance to it.

Now in space, find the location of the station where you are warping back and forth to, to drop of your ore. It's not that hard, stations in space are marked as a white square, just turn your view around and move your mouse over the white squares until you find the station your using. When you find it, click it once so it becomes highlighted with a bigger white square, this is so you can more easily see it.

Ok so you now have your jettison cargo container targeted and you have marked the station in space where you're going to. (Look at the picture above)

Now start to fly in the opposite direction of where the station is in space. If you're looking at the station icon in space, turn 180 degrees and fly away from it.

Fly away from it until you reach 15 km from the targeted jettison container. This is important; you have to stop at 15 km, since 15 km is the approach flight distance. When your ship has come to a halt at 15 km from the jettison cargo container check how well your jettison cargo container aligns with the station icon.

Meaning, your jettison cargo container should be aligned so that it's in (or very close) the stations white square in space. You should have a straight line from your ship to the jettison cargo container to the station. (Like I said, in the white square that symbolises the station in space or as close as possible). You may have to move your ship a little until you get there, make small adjustments, but the closer you get to a straight line, the better your bookmark will be.

Once you have your ship aligned with the cargo container and the station at 15 km make your bookmark. You make a bookmark by going to the left menu, click people and places. When People and places window comes up click the tab places. Now at the bottom of your people and places window you have a button called Add bookmark, click it. You will now get a new small window asking what to label this bookmark, make sure you label it something you can understand later on when looking at it, say weeks later. Something like; Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 if you're in the solar system Ellmay and ant the belt VIII-1.

If you don't label your bookmarks with something you and others can understand you wont be able to figure out what the bookmark is good for at a later time and you will have a lot of bookmarks in time. You wont be able to share the bookmarks you made because no one else knows what it's for.

When you've finished making the belts bookmarks you need to make a bookmark for the station. So warp to the station you're using to drop of you ore at.

When you come out of warp, don't dock. Just try to align your ship in a straight line from where you came out of warp and fly through the station until you reach 12 km.

So in basic language fly straight forward at 180 degrees from where you came out of warp. (This means you will fly through the station to reach 12 km, use a small vessel large ones just get stuck in the stations gravity filed)

This is the same method you used when doing the belt bookmark only thing that is different is that you don't have a jettison cargo container or the station icon to try to align in a straight line.

You can do it this way because the station is so much larger then your jettison cargo container, so that if you don't get a straight line it doesn't matter that much, just as you come some what close to it.

Why you have to use 12 km for station are because they have a bigger radius (they're huge). As you may have noticed when you dock at a station you do it when you're about 1500- 2000 meters away from its centre. And then we add a 1000-15000 meters for error. So we get 12 km as a limit to use for making bookmarks at stations.

Once you have reached 12 km from the station make sure your ship stops there (either target the station to see at what range you are, or move your mouse over it to see the range), make your bookmark, label it something like, Ellmay Belt VIII - 1 Station.

Then you will know later on that this is the bookmark to use when I'm mining in the belt VIII - 1.